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Oh.
My gaze went back to the marks on the floor, knowing what the red was. Blood. My blood.
I hadn’t even been aware of them.
Not until right then.
I guess the survival instinct had dulled it for me, but now that I was—for the moment—safe, the pain was a burning and throbbing sensation. Cuts. And maybe blisters.
Still, a small price to pay for freedom.
“I can clean them,” I insisted.
He didn’t argue with that, focusing instead on trying to get Judah to eat some of the buttered English muffin.
“How far was the walk?” he asked again.
“Two and a half hours, the directions said. But I’m not sure how long it took. It could have been half the time or double it. It was just a blur of aching arms and crying, hope and guilt.
A sad look crossed Aurelio’s face, but he didn’t say anything. Which I appreciated. I was a mess enough. Any more kindness from him was going to open the floodgates again.
Eventually, Judah became difficult, prompting Aurelio to start doing the whole airplane trick with the fork.
Somehow, that small, sweet little gesture had my heart squeezing in my chest.
“You’re good with him.”
“There’s a lot of kids in my family,” he said.
Was it just me, or was there something wistful in his voice when he said that? Like maybe he wanted some of his own.
Not, I imagined, to just carry on his ‘empire,’ the way Warren wanted a child, though.
“I can take him,” I insisted as he set Judah down on the floor.
“He’s okay. There’s nothing he can get into. Believe me, if there was, one of my nieces or nephews would have found it and broken it,” he added as Judah moved around the kitchen, tugging at drawers, but finding them locked.
Aurelio stood, but only to move to the doorway into the living room, and pulling some sort of built-in child gate out of the doorway itself. Like a pocket door, but only half of it. Then he walked toward the opening of the dining room and did the same.
“That’s incredibly handy,” I said, watching as Judah ran toward them, but couldn’t make them budge.
“When I renovated, I had future children in mind,” Aurelio admitted as he ducked into a cabinet, and produced a bunch of plastic cups in a container, and set them on the floor for Judah to play with before joining me again.
Was this man real?
Gorgeous.
Kind.
Knowledgeable about and good with kids.
He seemed like a dream come to life.
“I’m just going to grab the first aid kit and some supplies,” he said, making his way out of the room, and allowing me to close my eyes and let out a deep breath while I reached across the table to snag some of Judah’s leftover eggs.
I was suddenly ravenous.
And after months, maybe years, of feeling too nauseated to enjoy food, it felt good to actually enjoy eating.
